A blog a month?

Ummm yeah, blog a week FAIL.  Epic Fail.  Oh well...moving on.

I have all kinds of random photos that I have taken over the last few weeks on my phone and as I was looking over them it really made me realize that I need a new camera.  Like, a CAMERA.  Although apparently the new phones have lenses and resolution just as good as a digital camera, and I am due for upgrade on my phone in June.

It's been a very busy few weeks.  We haven't done very much interesting eating or cooking, although we did squeeze in a few fun things.  There is a decent sushi place close by called Kansai that does a sushi happy hour after 11PM.

I totally forgot to take a picture of the huge platter of sushi before we started eating.

I made a batch of cookies and cream fudge two weeks ago.  It's one of my favorite candies, although we eat so little sweets now that I find it very rich.  As a matter of fact almost the entire batch of it is still in the container on the counter (Chris doesn't eat it).  

Everything in the pan after cooking the sugar, butter and milk together.  This part always messes with my head a little.  Just when you have been stirring and stirring and you start to think that you have absolutely done something wrong and are going to toss the whole thing and go wallow in your failure it starts to smooth out and comes together perfectly.

All mixed together and in the pan, the recipe calls for crumbled up cookies on the top but I like the big pieces, sometimes I even take whole cookies and stick them in upright so that they are standing up on the top.

We pulled out our tabletop rotisserie and cooked a chicken last week.  Chris made an awesome spice mix with a little bit of almost everything on the rack (I don't know exactly, I know there was garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne, paprika, black pepper, salt and probably a handful of other things discovered in the spice rack), we make a very similar rub with brown sugar in it that we use on pork a lot.

Once again I forgot to take a pic before we got it in the oven AND forgot to take one when we took it out (it was a gorgeous, photo spread worthy golden brown lovely looking bird, I promise).  Here it is all trussed and on the skewers right after we put it in.

Chris helped Michael Sebastiani at her store right around the beginning of the year (my Napa wine-head friends will know exactly who he is.)  She happened to mention that we are fans of his wine (we are members of the wine club at his winery Highway 12, it's the only membership we have kept).  He got her info from her and last week we got this box in the mail.  

That bottle on the right, the Highwayman, it's their signature red and not cheap, we were SUPER excited to get it.  We have received two bottles of it in club shipments and the oldest one is FINALLY ready to drink after five years of cellaring...I am so excited!  

I also have to give Mr. Sebastiani some serious kudos for being a damn good business man.  He very well could have driven away from Chris's store and totally forgotten that she was a fan of his wines and never given it another thought.  Taking the time to follow up with a customer and create that lasting good impression is something that tends to be sorely lacking these days.  If you are at all into wine I highly suggest checking Highway 12 out, I have not yet tasted one of their wines I did not care for.  Their Sauvignon Blanc is Chris's favorite wine, bar none and their table wine (Mission Hardware red) makes the best pot roast (I pour about half the bottle in with the roast and we drink the rest with dinner!)

The company I work for moved to a new office last Friday night, myself and 7 other folks stayed late to help supervise the movers, which also meant we got to play in the new space before there was anything in it!  The new office is about twice the footage we moved out of, it's so nice!  

Here it is before the movers arrived with all our desks and whatnot (that's Jeremie on his phone), my new home is in the back corner by that whiteboard on the left.

 Our new building is the light colored one in the middle there.

We can see the pyramid now! I shot this out a window in one of the conference rooms.

I didn't leave the new office until almost 11:30 last Friday, so Chris took me to Kansai for dinner again. =)

Beer was DEFINITELY needed, and they always bring edamame, and we got soup because we ordered tempura.

This time I remembered to take a pic before we started in on the food!  Tempura and three sushi rolls, plus the beer and the free edamame and soup and the total was less than $30.00 with tip!  Can't beat sushi happy hour!  (side note, this was the pic that made me decide I need a camera so I don't have to take all my pics on my phone!)

Last Sunday we decided to take a trip to the Jack London Square Farmers Market, which is one of the best markets in the area during the spring and summer.  It is a bit smaller this time of year but still fun, and we got some great stuff!

There is an awesome vendor who is there every week called Farmhouse Culture, they make great sauerkraut.  We bought a ceramic crock from them several months ago and last week we brought it and had them fill it with our favorite flavor of theirs, dill pickle sauerkraut, it's got sliced pickles in it, it is SO good.

We decided to have brunch at the market.  We got a yummy pizza from these guys for $10, it had prosciutto and mixed olives on it.  Awesome wood fired pizza, and the mobile pizza oven is pretty darn cool.

We also got fish tacos from Cholita Linda, which we had been wanting to try for several months.  I have to say I think it was possibly the best fish taco I have ever had.  Fried fish but not at all greasy or heavy, not too much cabbage on it, house made hot sauce which was the perfect little hit of heat to bring up the fish, and slices of radish!  My only regret is that we waited so long to try their food!

Our fish tacos and pizza brunch, my kinda meal.  And the pizza was so big I took two of the slices home and ate them for dinner a couple nights ago. =)

The cool and slightly gloomy weather kept the crowds down a lot, we got in, grabbed some groceries, had a meal and got back out in about an hour (this pic is standing right behind the market stands looking out at the bay).

So...it's been a little cold at night lately, we have actually had freezes several nights over the last week.  Went out to the car one morning around four a.m. and the whole car was covered in a pretty good layer of ice.  It was pretty, but a nuisance, people who live in our area are not prepared for this stuff!

The barista made a pretty heart/leaf on my mocha the other morning. =)

Being that I work within a block of the headquarters of three major banks we see a lot of the Occupy SF activity.  There was a big protest yesterday.

The protesters blocking traffic at the intersection of California Street and Montgomery Street.

Protesters chained to the doors of the Wells Fargo building across the street from my office.

I guess after a while Wells Fargo got tired of the people chained to the doors, the next time I went outside they had done this.

The dogs and I walked around a block we had never explored before today and we found this really cool plant.  Anyone know what it is?  It looked like black leather from a few feet away, really shiny and a gorgeous purple/black color standing up on a stem that looked like a tree branch.

Hopefully this next couple weeks we will get back on track with cooking more often and there will be more fun things to share.  I did make a loaf of Italian bread last week that I over proofed which baked up about an inch thick and six inches wide, which was pretty funny, but not edible (really, really hard).  No pics though, I was so annoyed with it I forgot...lol.

There are a couple really fun things coming up in the bay area:
February 16 is the East Bay Brew Fest which sounds like it's going to be a good time for all, and benefits a great organization.
February 25 is the first Bay Area Derby Girls bout, I will probably be pouring beer, come see me!
March 3 is the Bay Area Brew Festival, it's a Saturday, so we probably wont go, but you should.

Ciao!
-S